https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elLI9PRn1gQ
This is a pretty niche subgenre of internet drama so I'm going to have to give you some context
- Online fitness content has two basic camps: "bro lifters" and "science-based" lifting. These camps argue about whether you should be making academically informed decisions based on research or if it's better to follow conventional gym-culture wisdom
- On the "science-based" side one of the loudest and most famous proponents is Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization
- For the past like, 20 years he's been publishing lots of science-based content, which for a very long time was so different to most fitness content. Think long form lecture content on how protein synthesis works and how to measure training volume etc.
- He has the relatively rare combination of being a successful bodybuilder, academic researcher and professor, brazilian ju-jitsu wrester, professional training coach and steroid junkie in a world where authority figures are generally only one of these things
- In recent years this style of content has blown up with the likes of Jeff Nippard etc.
- In very recent years Dr Mike's channel has blown up bigtime and he's gone from being everyone's favourite science nerd to celebrity influencer.
- This transition seems to have gone to his head or maybe the pressure to pump out content all the timehas been a factor, but the channel has started to go downhill
- Mike's attitude has become increasingly odd and egotistical. He started a second channel to discuss his libertarian views and has been going off on rants about all kinds of weird stuff
- People started to doubt his position as an authority, especially drawing attention to the fact that he has been using his status as an authority as evidence that he's right.
- The above video arrives and completely demolishes his PhD. Riddled with statistical anomalies, grammatical and spelling errors, obvious cutting/pasting, overall presents no new knowledge or cohesive argument (athletic people are athletic, fin), excessively verbose. How the hell did this pass?
- The video above is actually far more rigorous and cohesive than anything in the paper
- the paper was so bad that now everyone wants to know what the hell is going on in the entire field of exercise science institutions
- Omg TL:DR - the most respected authority/communicator in the field of exercise science got his PhD from a thesis so bad it should have been a failed bsc paper and it's a huge L for the culture of science-based fitness content